what are void pointers?

hello all .
well what are void pointers ? and how do we use them ? i mean where exactly do we need these kind of pointers , you know im kinda confused ! void means nothing! so whats the point of pointing to nothing! ?
can anyone tell me what fields utilize the void pointers ? some examples! would be greatly appreciated .
thank you all dears in advance

----
by saying void pointers i mean ' void * '

They are pointers that can point to anything, basically. Do not use them in C++ unless you have to interface with some C code. Templates are a much better solution.

a void pointer is essentially a type-less pointer. you cannot dereference a void pointer, but you can cast it to any other type of pointer. in this case void doesn't mean 'nothing', but rather 'unknown'. the compiler doesn't know what's at the address pointed to by a void pointer until you tell it what it is with a cast.

thanks .
can some one by the way show me some examples of using void pointers ! i mean just in action, how do we use em! just by casting them to other kind of pointers ? if so why would we want to do that ? pointing to some where unknown !whats the point of making void pointers anyway! ?

Code:

---

int* p = new int;
void* p2 = p;
int* p3 = (int*)p2;

*p2 = 0; // Error
*p3 = 5; // OK
delete p;

---

void* pointers are usually used in C as a generic type. C++ has inherited it, but it has much better solutions right now (templates) than using void* pointers.

to me, a void* a pointer to something that is supposed to be unknown to that particular object. e.g: a chunk of arbitrary or mixed-type binary data (such as data read as packed-binary such as an archive or off a TCP stream).

Arbitrary data is often referred to with a char pointer though, so that it can be read byte by byte.

In many cases polymorphism is used as the alternative to void pointers.

The special property of void pointers is that any pointer type, except function and method pointers, can be assigned to a void pointer. In C it also has the property that it can be assigned to any pointer without a cast.

A typical C use of void pointers is callback functions, where a generic function takes as arguments some other function via a function pointer and some data. The data is passed via a void pointer.

thank you all .
but would some one explain this part abit more ?

Quote:

---

A typical C use of void pointers is callback functions, where a generic function takes as arguments some other function via a function pointer and some data. The data is passed via a void pointer.

---

For example look at the standard C qsort function with the usage example.

qsort doesn't care what it is sorting, as it's just pushing bytes around and so it just feeds some addresses to the comparison function. The comparison function, on the other hand, should know what it is comparing and hence cast the void* back to the real type.

Another example is pthread_create() which is used to create threads on POSIX systems.

Sorting is generally implemented via template functions is C++, such as std::sort.

By contrast creating a thread would be better accomplished by a function taking a polymorphic object, as is done in java.